I've been reading in the paper over the weekend about the riots in Europe and Africa over the cartoon portraying Muhammad as a terrorist. I don't agree with the cartoonist standpoint but the riots are ridiculous.
The Da Vinci Code,by Dan Brown, insinuated that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. Many Christians were offended by this and urged people not to read the book. There were, however, no riots. No bounties were placed on Dan Brown's head - as far as I know at any rate. Christians may not have liked it but it was in fact Dan Brown's story and he had a right to print it.
The cartoonist had every right to give that view of the Muslim prophet. Muslims do not have to like it, but that does not justify riots that hurt other people and certainly not a bounty on the cartoonist's head.
These riots are illogical and counter-productive. Their prophet was portrayed as a violent terrorist. In reaction some Muslims have become violent. If some Muslims are mad about Muhammad being portrayed as violent they shouldn't be violent themselves. Riots prove the cartoonist's point in my opinion.
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The reason this story just won't go away is that it's not about cartoons, however distasteful -- it's about fear cowing the media, says Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby:
...the refusal of the US media to show the images at the heart of one of the most urgent stories of the day is not about restraint and good taste. It's about fear. Editors and publishers are afraid the thugs will target them as they targeted Danny Pearl and Theo van Gogh; afraid the mob will firebomb their newsrooms as it has firebombed Danish embassies. ''We will not accept less than severing the heads of those responsible," an imam in Gaza preaches.
''Whoever insults a prophet, kill him," reads the sign carried by a demonstrator in London. Those are not figures of speech but deadly threats, and American newspapers and networks are intimidated."
Violence and terror are built into the infrastructure of Western Civilization.
Whether Bush calls it a 'Crusade' or 'Operation Infinite Justice' or 'The War on Terror' or 'The Long War', political and military violence remains the most pervasive and insidious face of human violence since the dawn of recorded history.
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